The Best Travel Apps You Need for Your Next Trip

I keep so many important stuff on my phone that it’s almost impossible to think about traveling without it. I load up my smartphone with all the handy apps that make my life on the road easier. Yes, traveling can be a breeze with the right app on your phone. You can easily change your plans and book everything you need within minutes through your phone. Believe it or not, you can even save some money. So here’s my top travel apps recommendation:

1. SKYSCANNER

Searching and booking your next destinations is so easy with Skyscanner. This app helps you to find the most affordable, best options route via its travel partner. Similar to Google flight, you can scan the cheapest date to fly through month view calendar and set an alert when the price change. Don’t know where to go? Choose ‘Everywhere’ and Skyscanner will give you list destinations from the cheapest to the most expensive for your option.

2. TRAVELOKA

Same as Skyscanner, but sometimes Traveloka has some promos for hotels and flight combo that’s not available anywhere else. One nice feature of Traveloka is their localize payment getaway. You don’t have to use your credit card because you can pay using Bank transfer, BCA Klikpay, Indomaret, etc. I use this app mostly to book domestic flights.

3. BOOKING

Before Airbnb was born, this is my first go-to app when looking for hostels or dorms to stay. What I love about it is that you can use the filter to find hostels with Free cancelation and Pay Later options. Back in the days when I still in school, I don’t have any credit card and I don’t want to use my parents or my friend’s credit card. So this feature allows me to pay my accommodation with cash on when I checked in.

4. AIRBNB

Interact with locals, share an apartment with the owner but I especially like to book accommodation with AirBnB when I’m traveling with big groups of friend. Hotels usually only allow 2-3 people in a room with extra charge. But with Airbnb, you can find accommodation that can fit your big group of friend and it’s going to be a lot cheaper too.

5. ROME2RIO

This app can help a lot when you are traveling intercity and countries in short period of time. I used this app during my Europe trip to find alternative transportation to travel from one city or country to another. I don’t want to solely depends on train or flight because they can be incredibly expensive. Similar with GoEuro, you can compare the price of available transportation from airplane to bus and even Blablacar.

You can also search based on the best date and time that fits with your schedule. This app and GoEuro basically helps me save a lot of $$$ during my Europe trip because I can save a lot of money from my transportation budget (eventhough I end up spend it on shopping later on :p).

6. TRIPIT

Planning your itinerary is so easy with this app. Forget Word or Excel, this app is what you need. The app can sync with your email and put in all your reservations to your itinerary. Your confirmed flight, your Airbnb bookings, and all you have to do next is to start writing down all the places you want to go. Going with friends? Invite them through TripIt to help you build your itinerary. This will help them be proactive in suggesting places to go or eat rather than letting you plan the trip by yourself.

7. GOOGLE DRIVE

I can’t stress enough how important it is to keep a copy of your ID’s and passport, flight ticket, insurance on your phone and cloud storage. Google Drive allows you to keep all your travel documents safe and you can even save it for offline use. It means you can still open and use Google drive even when you don’t have an internet connection.

8. MAPS.ME

This app is a gem simply because you don’t need internet to access the places you want to go. It saved me some $$ during my Europe trip because I don’t even have to buy data or wifi connections. I only have to download all the countries region that I’m going to visit and pin all the places, terminals, bus stops to make it easier for me to find a way to go from one place to another. Of course, it’s not as extensive as Google Map but it does the job.. at least I never got lost :p

9. TRIPADVISOR

I use this app as a guide and read the reviews about restaurants, museums, etc. It just an awesome app because it’s available anywhere. When I’m running out of places to go or have some extra time to kill, I can click the Near Me function to find interesting places close by.

10. YELP

The unofficial Yellow Pages apps, I would say. I found this app especially useful during my trip to the US to find places to eat. It has reviews, menu, phone number, hours of operations.

11. GOOGLE TRANSLATE

Every time I’m traveling to a country that doesn’t use English as their primary language, I always download

12. XE CURRENCY

Don’t you hate it when you just exchange your money then suddenly you find another money changer with better rate. Well, with XE Currency, at least you can prevent that to happen because it will constantly be updated and offers live exchange rates for every world currency. It also can store the recent exchange rate so that you can access them online.

13. JOJO FINANCE

I’m a “Where did all my money go?” kind of person. I always lose track of my expenses and then wondering why I only have this much money left in my wallet. lol. So, Jojo Finance really helps me to keep my budget and spending on track. Before going on a trip, I always set my budget for food, shopping, accommodation so that I don’t overspend on things I don’t need.

14. LIGHTROOM CC MOBILE

I don’t always travel with my laptop so having Lightroom mobile is a must so that I can apply my presets right away to the photos that I just took. Btw, who wants to try some of the free presets that I just created?

15. SNAPSEED

Enhance your photos in seconds with Snapseed. I love Snapseep because it’s so easy to use and it has all the basic adjustment tools you need from enhancing the colors of your photos to eliminate the photobomber from your photos.

17. INSHOT

Although you can use Inshot for photo editing, I mostly use Inshot to edit videos. It’s very simple and straightforward. The best part? It doesn’t give an annoying watermark on your video. Oh, and you can also use the free music provided by Inshot.

What’s your favorite travel apps? Please do leave a comment for your recommendation, I would love to try them out.